


Take your breath away

by Elyrian_XIII



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Cute and dark, Don't post to other sites, Plot Twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 14:02:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20437211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elyrian_XIII/pseuds/Elyrian_XIII
Summary: Pepper reminiscences over her life since she met Tony.





	Take your breath away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Of_Lights_and_Shadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Of_Lights_and_Shadows/gifts), [SuccubusKayko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuccubusKayko/gifts).

> GIft for Of_lights_and_shadows, SuccubusKayako & Rou-Ren (sorry, I don't know your AO3 user name!!) ^^
> 
> \-------
> 
> This is written merely for fun since I don't own anything but the part where I actually wrote this.... so if this pile of pure self-indulgence is found anywhere else than AO3: suka blyat

Peper owed a lot to Tony, she thought as she was preparing ingredients. She performed the monotone act so many times she didn’t have to think as she went through the steps of washing, peeling, chopping or otherwise prepping everything she needed and she let her mind wander.

She first met Tony in her first year of college. She knew he lived on the other end of the hallway in her dorm building, but didn’t actually talk with him until he threw a massive party on a school night that just so happened to be the same night she was working on her paper that was due the next day and her first lecture of the day started at 8 in the morning. Well “talk” might not be the right word to use since she gave him the tongue lashing of his life that had him turn down the music volume and promise her that he’ll only throw parties on Friday nights. Even now when he would throw a party for whatever reason, he would still do it on a Friday or Saturday night. He most likely forgot the little “talk” they had but the effects still showed. 

Admittedly her memory wasn’t much better because she couldn’t quite recall how that came about but by the end of the month Tony was her best friend and she would come over for a movie night with him and Rhodey every time their schedules allowed them to hang out. So it wasn’t unusual she was over at their dorm room when she got the call her parents died in a car crash. When she heard that unless she took custody, her younger sister would be put in foster care, her whole world crashed down. Despite her parents saving up for Pepper and her sister’s college, it wouldn’t be enough to get her through while also taking care of her sister who would finish highschool next year. Grief made her memories fuzzy, but she could still hear Tony’s voice saying “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

Next day she already got the offer from SI to finance her schooling and in exchange she would come to work for them as Tony’s PR manager once she graduated. She had no idea how Tony did it but she suspected he made a deal with Howard - she saw him designing tanks and other war equipment for the first time not long after the entire ordeal.

That wasn’t the only time he came through for her, she thought as she filled a pot with water and set it on the stove to heat it up to boiling temperature. 

When she started working at SI other employees treated her as a secretary, ordering her around and gossiping behind her back. Once a coworker tried to grope her and Tony introduced her to his driver, Happy, who taught her how to fight against opponents bigger than her. The first time she twisted a coworker’s arm behind his back and made him whimper like a child, they all backed away. 

After that Tony made sure she was always properly protected - instead of driving TOny around Happy taught her self defense and how to use a gun. For her birthday that year she was given a pair of earrings that had an inbuilt GPS tracker and a panic button that would send an alert to Tony when it was either pressed or she said the activation phrase. 

She didn’t know if that was part of Tony’s plan or if it was just a coincidence, but after spending so much time around Happy, the two of them discovered they had more in common than babysitting Tony. As she thought back to when Happy first asked her out, she fondly caressed the ring on her right ring finger. Who knows if she ever met him if she didn’t go talk with Tony about his loud music all those years ago?

Now that her mind was on her best friend and romance she thought back to when she first met his significant other. Well they weren’t together yet, but at this rate it was just a matter of time.

Loki one day just appeared in her office, claiming to be a bored alien prince and that he wanted a job to pass the time and be able to buy chocolate. She didn’t believe him, but after he showed her a quite impressive display of magic, she gave him the benefit of the doubt. At that time Tony was missing for a bit over a month and she was running SI in his stead, not trusting Obie as much as Tony trusted him, so she made Loki her personal assistant. At least that’s why official papers said. His actual job was to pretend to be an underpaid college student and gather information on pretty much everyone. The norse god look like she just told him christmas came early… Or Halloween considering his love for candy.

She never had any reservations over letting Loki prank anyone he came across - as long as it wasn’t Happy, but once he first came to ask her if he could switch the position of everything that wasn’t nailed down to mess with people, she pretended to think about it. Loki’s pout was so funny she would consider letting him do whatever he wanted, but she was a smart woman so she asked him to teach her magic. Once he heard that, he lit up in a fashion that reminded her a lot of how Tony got when he made a breakthrough in one of his pet projects and got to blabber about it to someone who was willing to listen.

Over the following weeks Loki went from being a fun casual acquaintance to being a close friend. He couldn’t teach her much since she was a mortal with very little magical talent, but one thing she took to as a fish to water was brewing potions. Most mages hated them since every ingredient had to be precisely prepared and adding just a single leaf too many could throw off the entire brew, but to her measuring out exact amounts and following the recipe to the letter was as easy as breathing. 

She smirked to herself as she added infusion of wormwood to the pot and stirred it twice clockwise before finishing it up by adding the ground up asphodel. This was one of the recipes Loki taught her to brew. When she first tried making it, Loki had to banish the pot before she was halfway through brewing since it was quickly becoming too acidic. Apparently she had a natural disposition towards poisons. 

But she didn’t need Loki to tell her that to know what she was capable off. After all, she was the one who swapped Obbie’s pills around so he ended up overdosing just a week after Tony was found. And then Tony just had to announce to the world he’s Iron man and she had to poison or somehow else get rid of various news reporters and other pests that increased their presence around Stark tower. 

Sadly she couldn’t always use the same tactics so she had to be creative. Anonymous potted plant that just happened to be poisonous, glitch in traffic lights that caused an accident that sadly destroyed what little the reporters were able to gather about Tony, high enough dose of feel-good pills in the drink of a girl who tried to slip something in Tony’s glass when he wasn’t looking… 

She had to be careful so people wouldn’t notice the body count surrounding Tony, but despite her causion the bodies were still dead bodies. And this is why she was brewing this potion. In the 6 months since Tony came out as a superhero her death count was high enough for SHIELD to plant a spy in their midst. 

Pepper turned to her potion that properly thickened and collected it in a vial. With a bit of help from the resident nordic god Natalie Rushman - or should she say Natasha Romanoff - would be no more.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the conversation I had with Of_lights_and_shadows, SuccubusKayako & Rou-Ren on FI server. I thought of most of it on my way home from work so ignore Tony & Pep being in college at the same time and whatever else feels off about this :P And yes, she's making Draught of living death ^^


End file.
